Mike Blumenthal

Reports have been coming in about flakiness in the verification process. Optilocal reported earlier in the week issues with service area and he also noted several users having reported temporary issues with phone verification which Google reports is fixed(Image from Michael Borgeit of 51Blocks.com), frequent system errors (We’re sorry but we are unable to server your request). …

This update was posted late yesterday on the Google LatLong Blog post about Combatting Spammy Closed Listing Labels on Google Maps Update 9/14/11 at 6:26pm (PST): As promised, we’ve recently made a change to our process of displaying when a business has been reported to be closed on its place page. More specifically, we have removed the …

Bad is a word that is used in many contexts in the English language. It can mean anything from terrible to awesome used by iteslf and there are many phrases that integrate the word for totally different meaning altogether. Bad boy, bad ass and a bad taste to note a few. This is particularly true …

Last Monday, the NY Times ran an article about how easy it was to mark businesses as either “reported to be closed” or “permanently closed” in Google Places. There had also been reports at the time that Google was actually sending out an email to claimed businesses that were marked as “permanently closed” although not …

The good folks from Artfibers, a prominent yarn store at 266 Sutter St. in San Francisco, CA, made this recent post in the forums:   I own one of the oldest and best yarn stores in San Francisco — Artfibers. Six months ago our name came up in a Google search “yarn San Francisco”. Now …

Google has just rolled out another moderated forum where users can provide suggestions and opinions as to how to improve Google Places. Here is the full text of the announcement: Ask us your Google Places for business questions Thursday, September 8, 2011 | 10:51 AM A little more than a year ago, we collected your questions and …

Salahuddin Choudhary, who replaced Carter Maslan  as a Product Manager for Places for Business in early June, has announced his departure from Google on his Google+ stream. He had been a product manager at Google since 2007. He noted: “Had an incredible 4 years and can’t wait for some of the amazing launches team Google …

An article on the recent spate of black hat closing flags that have been appearing on Places listings was published in the NY Times today by reporter David Segal. He is the same reporter that broke the JC Penny’s link buying story. The good news is that Google has promised a fix for the problem shortly: A Google spokesman, …

We all struggle to achieve high rankings in Google local. It is not clear exactly how hard these businesses have worked to achieve these high rankings. With Google Local’s ability to parse sentiment, their ability to create business categories on the fly and their desire to serve man you often will find local results that …

Update: One of the posters in the forum whose listing has gone into limbo noted that he just received the following email from Google: Thank you for your patience during this entire process while working with me. We have been working on a technical issue that has affected many users. Unfortunately, it appears your listing …